Transplants: Natural v. Artificial Hearts

When surgeons began boldly transplanting human hearts, they appeared to come into direct competition with researchers who had spent years trying to devise an artificial heart. But last week Houston's Dr. Denton A. Cooley, who has transplanted more hearts than any other surgeon, brought the two lines of investigation into a neat, complementary fit.

Transplants, Cooley told an American College of Cardiology meeting in Los Angeles, have produced evidence that the development of a successful artificial heart "may actually be easier than we had previously believed." The explanation: nature has provided the mammalian (including the human) heart with an elaborate...